Pella Christian’s cross country teams are preparing for their first meet of the season. Eagles’ head coach Jocelyn Meinders says because of the offseason training put in by several of her runners this summer, many team members already have a good foundation to build on.

“Most of them really ran a good amount of mileage. I encourage them to do around 200 miles…they didn’t all hit the 200, but one of my kids goes out an roofs 40 hours a week [in the summer]. Well, running 200 miles on top of that? Wow, that would be impressive, but he STILL put in about 150 miles” said Meinders.

“A lot of them are very motivated and they went out and they did put their mileage in and have a good base to start with. That’s huge, because we’re not spending the whole season getting in shape – we can spend the season working on getting stronger, getting faster and getting better.”

The teams at Pella Christian are small, but eager this fall – Meinders has nine girls and eight boys on her squads. The season opens on Saturday with the high school portion of the Central College Invitational in Pella.